The story began when the director of JRS, John Sandercock, was working in the RCA research laboratories
in Zürich and developed the first successful isolation platform for his own research purposes using
active feedback. Several of these systems found applications within RCA and later a commercial licence
was given to Newport Cooperation to manufacture the device. It appeared on the market as EVIS and
promptly won an IR100 award for one of the best novel products in the U" in 1987.

EVIS was slightly ahead of its time and too highly priced for the product to be able to compete with
passive isolation product. However around this time the tunnel microscope had been invented and this
was followed by a range of derivative instruments, most notably the atomic force microscope (AFM).
The market grew rapidly and with it the need for good compact isolation system.

John Sandercock left RCA in 1987 to set up JRS Scientific Instruments with the main purpose of developing
active isolation systems for this growing market. A modular system, MOD-2, was introduced in 1991 It
showed that the extra cost of active over passive isolation was outweighed in many cases by the better
perfomance. The MOD-2 system found many applications such as for Langmuir-Blodgett measurements,
interferometry, and microscopy. This was followed in 1995 by a self-contained unit, MOD-1, which was
particularly suited for many small AFM applications.

These products were sold world wide and made known initially by the efforts of Herzan and Halcyonics.
The cooperation between JRS and Halcyonics did not develop as intended and ended finally in 2002 when
Halcyonics bought the non-exclusive rights to the MOD-1 and MOD-2 technology from JRS .

The Table Stable was formed in 2001 to coordinate the sales effort and at the same time a new range of
automated low profile isolation systems was introduced with the TS designation. These system combine
technical excellence with elegant and user-friendly design and will set standards for the years to
come. (N.B. The 8001 series advertised by Kinetic Systems is just a standard TS150 from JRS with a
different top plate).

The Table Stable is represented worldwide by HWL Scientific Instruments in Germany, Herz Co. in Japan
and Herzan in the US.